Beyond the hype: Was Romney telling the truth about his binders full of women?

It all started with a simple question — whether Mitt Romney favored equal pay for women and men. But his convoluted answer took him back to the halcyon days that followed his victory in the 2002 Massachusetts governor’s race.

“I said: ‘Well, gosh, can’t we find some women that are also qualified? And so we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ And they brought us whole binders full of — of women.”

“Binders full of women” became an instant classic: the snarky tweets, the faux Facebook accounts, the parody photos, the YouTube videos.

But beyond the hype, the central question remains: Was Romney making this story up or was he telling the truth?

Here’s what the fact-checkers are saying:

As The Washington Post reports, Romney’s anecdote takes us back to 2002 when the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus asked Bay State gubernatorial candidates to sign a pledge saying they would “make best efforts” to ensure that the number of women appointed to high-level positions would more fairly represent the proportion of women in the population. Both Romney and his Democratic opponent signed that commitment. The “binder full of women” Romney speaks of actually existed. It was assembled by the caucus.

However, Romney wasn’t telling the truth when he said he took the first step, as he claimed when he stated, “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’”

In fact, it was the women’s groups that came to Romney with their portfolio of qualified women. So this part of Romney’s anecdote is untrue.

His claim about the emphasis on appointing women to his cabinet is accurate. As a statement from the caucus points out, 10 of the 20 top positions in Romney’s cabinet were filled out by women.

Still, there is more to this: According to a 2007 study by by the University of Massachusetts, women did not hold a higher percentage of senior-level positions than when he took office four years earlier. This is due to Romney’s pattern of appointees after his first wave of selections. He appointed more males to replace departing females than he named women to replace men.

Democrats criticize Romney for saying he needed help to find qualified women for senior positions. They also criticize the longtime venture capitalist for the dearth of women in partner positions during his years at Bain Capital.